The rapid rise in nonmarital fertility is arguably the most significant demographic trend of the past two decades. The proportion of births to unmarried women grew 46 percent over the past 20 years so that more than four in ten births now occur to unmarried women. Nonmarital fertility is quickly becoming a dominant pathway to family formation, especially among the disadvantaged. This is worrisome because decades of research show that children raised in single-parent homes fare worse on a wide range of outcomes (e.g. poverty, educational attainment, nonmarital and teen childbearing) than children raised by two biological parents. The poverty rates of single parent households are particularly striking. According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 46 percent of children in single mother households were living in poverty in 2013 compared to 11 percent of children living with two married parents.

How can we improve the lives of the growing numbers of unmarried mothers and their children? So far, a dominant approach has been to encourage their mothers to marry. At first glance, the logic makes sense. If growing up in a two-parent home is best for children, then adding a second parent to a single-mother home should at least partially address the problem. The 1996 welfare reform legislation and its subsequent reauthorization institutionalized this focus on marriage by allowing states to spend welfare funds on a range of marriage promotion efforts.

The flaw in this argument is the assumption that all marriages are equally beneficial. In fact, however, the pool of potential marriage partners for single mothers in impoverished communities does not include many men with good prospects for becoming stable and helpful partners. Single mothers are especially likely to marry men who have children from other partnerships, who have few economic resources, who lack a high-school diploma, or who have been incarcerated or have substance abuse problems. The new unions that single mothers form tend to have low levels of relationship quality and high rates of instability. A nationally representative study of more than 7,000 women found that approximately 64 percent of the single mothers who married were divorced by the time they reached age 35-44. More importantly, single mothers who marry and later divorce are worse off economically than single mothers who never marry. Even marriages that endure appear to offer few health benefits to single mothers unless they are to the biological father of their first child.

The hope of the marriage promotion campaign was that marriages in low-income communities could be made more stable and beneficial through skills training and support. Although one program in Oklahoma City slightly increased relationship stability, the most rigorous evaluation of the programs in eight cities found that, overall, they created no long-term improvements in new unwed parents’ relationship quality, marriage rates, or children’s economic wellbeing, and they actually resulted in modest decreases in fathers’ financial support and parental involvement.

Our recent research adds to the growing body of evidence that promoting marriage is not the answer to the problems facing single mothers and their children. Analyzing more than 30 years of data on a nationally representative cohort of women and their children, we found no physical or psychological advantages for the majority of adolescents born to a single mother whose mothers later married. We did find a modest physical health advantage among the minority of youth whose single mother later married and stayed married to their biological father, compared to those whose mothers remained unmarried. However, such unions are exceedingly rare. Only 16 percent of low income unwed mothers in the Fragile Families and Child Well Being study were married to the child’s biological father five years after the child’s birth. Marriage may matter, but only a little, and only in very specific and relatively rare circumstances.

There is growing consensus among researchers that it would be more beneficial to convince women to delay childbirth rather than to promote marriage. But even this seemingly uncontroversial policy is more complicated than it sounds. For African-Americans in the U.S., later ages at birth are associated with higher rates of neonatal mortality, perhaps because the stress of chronic disadvantage and racial discrimination accelerates biological aging for this group. More recent evidence from Britain indicates that delaying births to the early 20s offers few advantages for children’s later educational and socioeconomic attainment and our ongoing research suggests that such delays may even pose long term health risks for African-American women. Ultimately, attempts to influence highly personal decisions such as fertility timing and context will likely have limited success, especially in a context in which early or nonmarital fertility is sometimes adaptive compared to the alternatives.

A more promising approach is to focus on reducing unintended or mistimed births. Approximately 79 percent of births to unpartnered women under the age of 25 are unintended, and these appear to have the most negative consequences for women. Our research suggests that, among African-American women, nonmarital childbearing is associated with negative mental health outcomes only among those who did not expect to have a nonmarital birth. Unlike broader efforts to convince women to delay childbirth or to marry, reducing unintended births does not require changing attitudes or preferences. Instead, it involves providing women most likely to be negatively affected by a nonmarital or early birth (i.e., those who do not intend to have one) with the resources and knowledge to carry out their intentions. These include comprehensive and early sex education and expansive and affordable access to birth control and family planning services.

If the goal of marriage promotion efforts was truly to lower poverty rates and improve the well-being of unmarried parents and their children, then it is time to take a different approach toward this goal. Fortunately, numerous models of success exist.International comparisons indicate that single mothers and their children fare substantially better in countries with supportive social and economic family policies. A recent cross-national comparison indicates that the 51 percent poverty rate of U.S. single parent households is nearly twice the average in 16 high income comparison countries, even though U.S. single parent households have higher rates of employment. Another recent study identifies three family policies associated with substantially lower poverty rates among single parent households: (1) family allowances (direct payments to parents of dependent children), (2) paid parental leave, and (3) publicly funded childcare for children under age 3. For example, in countries like the U.S. with the least generous family transfer policies among the 20 high-income countries included in the study, single parent households are more than twice as likely to be in poverty than in countries with the most generous policies. Paid parental leave and publicly funded childcare for children under age three appear especially advantageous in reducing poverty among single mothers, largely by increasing their employment rates—a primary goal of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Such policies benefit all families and are likely to be more effective than marriage promotion in reducing poverty and improving the lives of the growing number of single mothers and their children.

About CCF

The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Miami, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.

The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.